Tuesday, March 3, 2015

# 020 Purpose of life

In my earlier posting # 015 - Freedom is the goal of life, I had quoted Osho which does make good sense. But only when you live to reach adulthood. What happens if the life is taken away even before one can even think about goals of life?

This posting is in such a context.

It was the usual monthly check up for my nine-month-old baby daughter – chubby, beautiful, all smiles.  Instead of taking her to the general physician we went to a child specialist. The Physician took a glance at the baby and then gave us a very long look. Then he calmly informed that the size of the head of the baby is already that of a normal grown up human being and it can only mean that she is having Hydrocephalus – excess fluid in the brain. He was surprised that all these days none of the attending physicians have not diagnosed or not pointed out wantonly. We were advised to consult a Neurologist who immediately explained all about the rare medical condition, which perhaps happens to approximately 1 in 1000 children (exact data not available as no registry is being maintained) and surgery after surgery followed ultimately taking the life away of the innocent child.

I later learnt that Hydrocephalus can be caused by congenital or acquired factors. Since congenital causes are ruled out in our case, it must have been only due to acquired causes. From the texts I have read, the causes could be; haemorrhage, meningitis, head trauma, tumours, cysts. Now that was interesting! The obstetrician was in a hurry to go out of town and so delivered the child by 'vacuum extraction'.Now browsing the net indicated that a vacuum extraction carries with it a risk of injury for both mother and baby. And in our case the baby did sustain an injury in the head. Though the medical article says that serious infant injuries after a vacuum extraction are rare I suspect that it WAS serious which had led to this fatal issue.

But if only it had been noticed earlier the child could possibly have been saved, who knows? That was not to be was the bigger problem.

In fact suing the doctor crossed our minds but to what avail. What do we gain even if we win a case – certainly not the lost life?  The question is not whom to blame or who was responsible. Not even how or what caused the problem. The real question is why it happened at all?

Now the question that has not been answered till today even by any philosophers/ Swamijis, leave alone the experts in different fields, is: What was the purpose of such a short lived life or life in general? What possibly could have made the innocent life to go thro all those ordeals in such a short span of just about 18 months that it was here?

This is one of the inflection points in my life, earliest one at that. It made me think hard on how life manifests, apparently in an insentient, matter. What exactly is life? How and why it manifests? Is there a Grand order or design behind all these things? Then is there a designer behind this design? The more I think the more questions remain unanswered.

"Life is a mystery to be resolved and not a problem to be solved" said Sri Ramakrishna. I am trying to resolve mine, what about you?